Being Amber Rhea

Saturday Keynote: Changing Your World with Blogs

It’s the second day of ConvergeSouth (and the first day that Rusty and I will be here for the entire day). Sue Polinsky is introducing Elisa Camahort, and I’m going to attempt to live-blog it, until my MacBook battery dies, anyway. Sue is saying there aren’t a lot of women bloggers with “credentials,” so it’s hard to fill panels with women. I disagree… there are tons of women bloggers with all kinds of credentials out there. Next Sue said, “Or maybe we just don’t know about them.” That’s more like it!

9:17 a.m. - Elisa points out that they had 136 women speakers at BlogHer ‘07.

9:21 a.m. - Blogging is good for your health, because of the connections you make. Elisa cites the example of Millie Garfield’s blog.

Blogging (and podcasting) offers us the opportunity to have a record of our lives, our parents’ lives, and our grandparents’ lives that we never had before. Elisa says she wishes she’d had an opportunity to record her grandmother’s story before she died.

9:26 a.m. - What’s the definition of a blog? If someone is an active commenter but doesn’t have their own blog, are they a blogger? What about Twitter, or Facebook? The definition of what it means to be a blogger is changing and evolving, because it’s all about the community that forms.

9:32 a.m. - Elisa addresses the (sometimes flip) sentiment, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” So what’s wrong w/ making money from your blogging endeavors, if you can? Blogs are changing the way we do business.

Now Elisa is talking about Chloe Spencer, “teen pro-blogger.”

9:36 a.m. - Elisa disagrees w/ what a lot of tech bloggers say, that unless you have a very specific niche, it’s hard to build an audience. She says it’s about having a unique voice and a way of telling your personal story that makes people laugh, nod their heads, or just be interested. I agree.

9:40 a.m. - Is it going to be harder to make a living via blogs as the blogosphere becomes more saturated? Elisa is talking about Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes, who makes six figures per year from her blog. Of course, the part people don’t mention as much is that Elise started her blog four years ago when there were maybe ten food bloggers, and now there are tens of thousands.

Other people are using blogs to move their careers forward in other ways - not just making money via ads on their blog. Example: Megan Garnhum got her dream job w/ WeeWorld after she was inspired to do something she loves (write a blog about shopping) which made her visible and gave her her own playing field. That visibility got her recognized by WeeWorld, where she now works.

9:47 a.m. - Politicians are starting to realize that they ignore people outside the political blogosphere at their peril. (Answer to rhetorical question of why did Elizabeth Edwards come to BlogHer ‘07 even though it was not a huge media opportunity for her?)

9:51 a.m. - Example of blogs impacting real-world action: Grace Davis started a Katrina relief blog after a woman in Mississippi posted on Craigslist that she could drive around to different shelters in Mississippi, but didn’t know how to get the word out; all she had was her car and her cell phone. Grace called this woman and said she’d start a blog. The woman in Mississippi then would call Grace and tell her what shelter she was at, its address, how many people were there, and what they needed. People would see it on the blog and ship directly to the shelters. Because of this blog, supplies were getting to the shelters before FEMA.

9:57 a.m. - Guy in the audience says he thinks people in their 20’s and early 30’s don’t need face-to-face connection. I spoke up, of course. Heh.

As a nice on-point epilogue, Elisa used Rusty and me as an example! ‘Cause you know, we met via reading our blogs, and look at us now.